How COVID-19 Forced a Faster Conversion to Cloud-Centric IT

COVID-19 has proven to be an accelerator of enterprise cloud adoption and will continue to drive a faster conversion to cloud-centric IT. By the end of 2021, most enterprises will put a mechanism in place to accelerate their shift to cloud-centric digital infrastructure twice as fast as before the pandemic. In this article, John Ezzell, co-founder and executive vice president, BIAS Corp, explains how the coronavirus forced the world into a work-from-anywhere environment and fast-tracked cloud migration and digital transformation schedules.

The technology industry is constantly evolving, with innovative solutions impacting how we conduct business and live our lives. The speed at which enterprises can innovate is critical for them to be able to carve out the competitive edge to succeed in the new era of digitally connected customers.

Businesses should always be anticipating what the world will need next. We moved from landlines and dial-up internet to cell phones and Wi-Fi when globalization became a reality. One of the biggest shifts in our lifetime is upon us now. That is the digitally connected customer experience that is connecting DATA, AI, and ML in real-time to produce INFORMATION as part of the digital transformation journey. 

Last year coronavirus forced many changes upon us that we weren’t necessarily ready or eager to implement, like wearing masks and social distancing. In the business world, perhaps more than any other sector, we were forced to dive headfirst into a work-from-anywhere policy that aggressively accelerated cloud migrations and digital transformation schedules. A recent surveyOpens a new window found that 83% of IT executives agreed that remote work had increased the priority of shifting workloads to the cloud. 

Why Now?

In December, Pew released a surveyOpens a new window that found 71% of employees’ jobs could be done remotely were now completely working from home. No longer tied to a desk and a chair, a cubicle and a long commute, the safer option became taking their work with them, wherever that may be. This presented challenges — challenges that cloud technologies were ready to tackle. 

Cloud technologies are not reliant on where they are hosted. They are not defined by being housed on servers on-premises. This type of flexibility coincides with what we learned about offices during this pandemic: they can be in any location. Anywhere that your employee has access to a computer and their files is now a workplace. Cloud services were made for this moment.

Digital transformation to the cloud allows users to access their properties much like web-based email servers: quickly and from anywhere. This ease of access has been crucial for the continuity of business as usual during the pandemic. The needs don’t stop with personal access but extend to collaboration. Since we’re no longer working in offices next to one another, we need tools that allow us to collaborate in real-time on documents and projects, which is where cloud technologies come into play. From CRM platforms to shared documents, businesses learned quickly that access and real-time communication were necessary for successful collaboration. With access to cloud-based platforms, users can review and share information safely and securely.

Learn More: Keeping Up With The Cloud: What Companies Can Learn From Amazon’s Leadership Shift

Safer Workplace

Perhaps the most overarching concern of the new remote work reality has been security. Employees are accessing more websites and apps from more devices and networks than ever before. This increases the vulnerability of every individual and business asset. If they can access this data from anywhere, what’s to keep bad actors from doing the same? When every computer is no longer safeguarded by the same network, housed in the same office, the very real security concerns of working from home rose to the forefront. 

However, the logistics of moving to the cloud negate traditional security concerns. A cloud hosting provider’s only job is to provide data security — carefully monitoring users 24/7. Unfortunately, when using in-house, on-premises solutions, IT teams have a variety of problems to navigate, with security only being one piece of the puzzle. In fact, RapidScale foundOpens a new window that 94% of companies saw an improvement in security after moving to the cloud, and 91% believe the cloud makes it easier to meet compliance requirements. 

The initial move can be unnerving like any new tech or innovation. Convincing someone to let go of the aged-out floppy disks was surely just as complex. But as our new workforce continues to prefer mobility and flexibility, finding a partner to help with cloud migration is key. The bottom line is the principles of security are not changing whether for cloud or on-premises. The struggle is finding a solution that can provide a centralized and externalized approach. Even pre-pandemic, migrating to the cloud was complex, requiring a long-term strategy. I’ve found that businesses that keep these four things in mind are most successful:

• Commitment from senior executives and upper management
• Selection of an integration partner who brings automation as part of the offering
• Conducting initial assessments to assure that plans are devised for minimal business interruptions
• Identifying core and critical components as well as conducting a business impact assessment
  

These four priorities help ensure that both parties are aligned on goals and can reach successful digital transformation to the cloud for the long-term through their shared expertise.

Learn More:  Stalled Cloud Migrations: Look at the People, Not the Tech

Workplace of the Future

No matter what industry you work in, competitive advantage is key. You can’t just perform at the same level as your competition, but you must have every tool in your team’s arsenal to think of the next innovation to outperform competitors in the marketplace. Unfortunately, the pandemic has left many businesses at a disadvantage, with Fortune magazine reportingOpens a new window 100,000 businesses closing due to the pandemic.

Migrating to the cloud may have been accelerated by COVID-19, but it’s apparent now that it’s going to be the standard for successful businesses moving forward. The work-from-home forced experiment was largely a success in the eyes of employees and employers alike. This flexibility will likely carry over long past the end of the pandemic. The office isn’t going to look like it once did, with many CEOs investing money in other priorities rather than the prime office real estate like before. 

While cloud computing has been growing for a decade, it will soon become the standard operating procedure for networks. Cloud-based platforms are crucial to allow a global workforce to work together efficiently and securely. 

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